Monday, November 23, 2009

Snowball is a mutt with a lot of curly white fur. Our vet thinks he's a LhasaPoo.

In the last few months the fur has overgrown his eyes, so that we can't see them. This doesn't appear to be a problem for him, as watching him navigate the house it's obvious that he sees quite well.

Marie, however, has serious issues with this. She's convinced he's now blind, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

So last night we were woken by wild howling and barking. The hall bathroom light was on, so I ran in there.

Marie apparently was unable to sleep, and was up worrying about Snowball's vision. She REALLY felt something had to be done, so she'd cornered him in the bathroom, and was using all sorts of her own hair things to pull the hair out of his eyes. She had his bangs tied up in ponytails over each eye. She also had plastic hair clips placed above and below both eyes to hold more hair out of the way.

It was so sad. He looked like the guy in "A Clockwork Orange" where they wired his eyes open to force him to watch movies.

I sent Marie to bed and freed Snowball. He spent the rest of the night in bed with me to show his appreciation.

I wanted to be a vet when I was a kid, so my best friend and I set up a "clinic" in the basement and used my poor dog as our patient. She very graciously put up with it all, until my Dad caught us "disinfecting" her paws in little bowls of warm water.

I've been following your blog for quite some time now and love it! I want to be a neurologist (in, about, 12 or so years...) but I already lost my sanity a long time ago.

We also have a LhasaPoo and he was subjected to very similar treatment by my mother when his fur grew out too much. I always felt terrible because he looked ridiculous, so one day I took matters into my own hands with a pair of scissors. Lesson learned: leave the grooming up to the groomer.

I'm working my way through your archive... sorry if this is irrelevant. Matted dog fur can cause many health issues. I'll spare you my usual spiel. As someone who grooms many matted dogs... get snowball groomed, he'll feel better and he'll be more lovable :)

Welcome to my whining!

This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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